It’s Pardon the Sea Day. As you may have intuited, it’s a British thing. And damned polite of them, considering all the British sailors that wine-dark sea has greedily devoured over the centuries. As Billy Shakespeare put it:
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them—Ding-dong, bell.
Ding-dong indeed. Sea, you are pardoned, until your next cruel feast.
